Plague Hulk w.i.p.

A good few years back, just after the previous edition of Codex: Chaos Space Marines hit the shelves, Virus finally decided he wanted to get into 40K. He had been a dedicated WFB player for years already, and wanted to try his hand at a new game... with this in mind, he found that the Chaos Marines, the Death Guard in particular, caught his eye.
He bought Typhus and a couple of marines, just to try out the feel of the army, that sort of thing. All these years later, and Typhus and his bodyguard have been joined by over 8'000 points-worth of their mates, including a Warhound titan, an armoured company's compliment of tanks, transports and walkers, and more Plague marines than you can shake a loyalist Chapter at... guess he liked them after all!
Here are the best of a batch of work-in-progress pics of Virus' latest addition to the army, a home-grown conversion of one of Forgeworld's latest offerings, the Plague Hulk. The rules for the thing are immense... imagine a Defiler, with a permanent 4+ cover save, offensive and defensive grenades, and a vicious set of poisoned weapons to boot; nasty stuff indeed, and he just had to have one.
The trouble is, Virus just isn't that fond of the way Nurgle daemons are sculpted, and I happen to agree... we just don't find anything that scary about fat blokes with idiot grins and poor hygiene! Yes, I know, that's just the way they are; but a bit of variation never hurt anyone, and so this conversion was born.
The basic chassis is a Soul Grinder from the Daemons range, and to this Virus has added several segments from an ordinary Defiler kit, mostly to make up the plague gun on it's left arm. To make the thing look more Nurgle-ish, he then carefully cut the head from the model and repositioned it further down the chest. The rest of the conversion involves almost an entire packet of green stuff.
Almost the entire torso was sculpted over, adding a layer of flesh shaped to look suitably buboes-ridden and flabby, almost as though the skin of the creature is loose on its musculature. The spinal column was extended up and over the top, running down to join with the back of the head, covering the hole it had left in the process.
Throw in the makings of a distended gut working its way over the top of the stomach plate that joins the creature part of the model to the machine half, and you're pretty much there. Virus then added more green stuff to the various armour plates, either to make them look warped, or to sculpt on Nurgle and Death Guard iconography. The end result is, to say the least, quite cool.
Once the model is painted, we'll post some 'finished article' pics, as well as a rough guide on how it was painted. For now, enjoy these 'in progress' snaps (though I apologise for the slightly poor quality in advance... I'm hoping to improve my photography as we go! - Blue).
~The FlashGitz